


The Glint

by HoneyOpal



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Blood, Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) is a Mess, Major Character Injury, Self-Hatred, This Is Some Straight Hurt/Comfort Shit Right Here, basically lance is an emo boi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:52:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13116429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HoneyOpal/pseuds/HoneyOpal
Summary: Everyone depended on him. They were depending on him, the way that he had feel that they hadn’t been before, the way that he had desperately desired them to do. They chose him. Lance. As their champion. Just like he’d always wanted.A chance to prove himself.And he crashed. And failed.---This is a fic request from laurlovescookies on tumblr! They asked for some Lance and Red angst to give as a gift to their roommate and I obliged! This was super fun to write and I really hope y'all enjoy it! If you want me to write a fic for you, please feel free to send me a message at my tumblr: luxuriant-starlight.





	The Glint

For a while, all Lance could see was black. 

 

It wasn't even really black, if he's being entirely honest. He'd once heard someone ( _ Pidge? _ ) say that black wasn't a color- it was the absence of color. He'd thought about it afterward and been unsure if that was entirely true about all "shades" of black, but now he got it. 

 

This black wasn't the black of a fresh leather jacket or a pretty girl's ebony hair. This black was the absence of color. 

 

An infinite void. 

 

An empty vacuum. 

 

_ Space.  _

 

He was in space?

 

He was in space. 

 

Lance opened his eyes, and saw the world before him in a blur. A world he didn't recognize. 

 

He sat up quickly, in a cold sweat, and immediately regretted it- there was a painful ache in his lower left side that made him hiss when he moved. He touched it, gently, and then examined his fingers. Red. 

 

Blood. 

 

Lance looked down and saw a deep red stain on his blue and white suit. He wasn't dying (yet), but he'd been severely wounded somehow. 

 

He sat up again- gentler this time- and was able to focus on his surroundings. Once he could see past the many cracks in the glass of his helmet, he was confused by who he saw.

 

He wasn't on Earth. That was for sure. 

 

This planet was barren- at least, it was right now, because it was covered in a thick layer of snow, as far as the eye could see- except it wasn't like snow that there was in Canada or Antarctica or anywhere else on earth, for that matter. 

 

The snow was soft and powdery- just like it was in New England in the Winter- and felt just as icy as normal snow is. In fact, it was totally normal, except for the fact that it was somehow… _ blue _ . 

 

Blue snow, as far as the eye could see. And he means really as far as the eye could see. It was snowing. Hard. Lance was in the middle of a blizzard- that seemed as if it had been going on for years, judging by how deep his body had sunk into the snow.

 

And that wasn’t all. As Lance continued to look around, squinting through the falling snow, he noticed countless rock formations in the distance- all of them a soft lavender color in a way that seemed unnatural.

 

And all around him were trees. Tall, ancient, leafless, jagged and curved trees that seemed to extend and twist in all shapes and directions- and they were all dyed Pepto-Bismol pink. 

 

But the strangest part of the land before him was the sky. It was day outside (at least, he supposed. Time on other planets was sometimes strange if their orbits were abnormally long or short), yet he could see every star in the sky. 

 

The sky, itself, was stained with the colors of a cotton candy sunset- yet it wasn't sunset. It just seemed as if the pink and blue and purple gradient sky was every day here. 

 

And among the stars? Distant planets of varying sizes and colors. They appeared to be much closer than Jupiter or Mars are to earth, but still slightly farther than the strange planet’s six or seven moons, that were all perfectly aligned in a straight vertical line above the horizon, their soft light (as well as the small light of the sun) reflecting brightly onto the seemingly endless snow that surrounded him. 

 

Snow. 

 

It’s snowing. 

 

Lance realized, then, in the midst of his pain and confusion, that he was freezing. It was so cold, he could feel his gloved fingertips being frozen solid by the bitter winter winds.

 

He managed to stand up (albeit with a lot of strain and effort), panting from dehydration and exhaustion, leaning on one of the pepto-bismol trees near him. 

 

Before him was an unnatural pattern in the snow, surrounded by metal and stone debris- as if an asteroid had hit the ground and skid over to where he had been passed out. 

 

_ But it wasn't an asteroid _ , Lance thought _. It was _ **_me_ ** _.  _

 

The indentation in the snow was fresh. Only a bit of new snow was covering it, so Lance figured he’d only been here for a few minutes, max. 

 

He furrowed his brows.  _ But how did I get here?  _

 

He looked around again.  _ Where  _ **_is_ ** _ here?  _

 

Before he could really figure that out, his highly-trained eye caught a glint of something in the distance- hidden in a purple cavern among the giant rocks. A sparkle- as if the reflection of sunlight on metal. 

 

Lance's heart raced. 

 

He forced himself to stand up straight and start walking towards the cavern- which was a good few hundred feet away. 

 

As soon as he took his first few steps, he shivered and groaned in pain, clutching his side. The wound was bad. But he had to keep going. He had to reach the glint.

 

He let the adrenaline overtake his body. He convinced himself to forget the pain and cold. He began limping towards the cavern where that strange, yet familiar glint was waiting for him. 

 

After a few minutes of trudging through the blue snow and leaving his body to perform entirely on auto-pilot, Lance began to wonder how he even got here. 

 

What was he doing, exactly? Before this? 

 

He had a gut feeling that it was important, but he couldn’t quite remember. Holding back the pain of his wound was affecting his ability to remember. He tried to force it down and push through. 

 

_ Okay, Mcclain. _ He told himself.  **_Focus._ ** _ What did Papi always say to do when you lost something? Trace back your steps. Try to remember what the last thing you did was. _

 

The last thing he did. He woke up in a pile of blue snow on a strange, cotton-candy planet. 

 

Before that he…

 

_ Oh. _

 

That’s right. 

 

He crashed. 

 

He crashed on an important mission. He is a paladin of Voltron. He is a defender of the universe. A hero to billions. 

 

He was on a mission. A solo mission. 

 

Hunk and Pidge and Shiro and Keith and Allura and Coran and Matt and the Blade of Marmora and thousands of resistance fighters and billions of innocents sent him on a mission to retrieve information from the Galra. Information with the potential to end the war- to end the Galra’s reign, to-

 

To stop the genocide and oppression of billions.

 

Billions of innocents who are being slaughtered and enslaved. 

 

He was sent a mission to free them.

 

He had gotten the information and made a dumb, impulsive decision- 

 

And he crashed. He lost the information.

 

Everyone depended on him. They were depending on him, the way that he had feel that they hadn’t been before, the way that he had desperately desired them to do. They chose him. Lance. As their champion. Just like he’d always wanted. 

 

A chance to prove himself.

 

And he crashed. And failed.

 

Lance’s knees turned to jello. The harsh blizzard seemed to push him forward. He fell to his knees in the bitter, blue snow. 

 

He’d failed. 

 

He looked down at his wound- now badly bleeding, a lot worse than it was when he’d first awakened. He passively realized he’d been somewhat impaled on something. Maybe stabbed. He still couldn’t remember. 

 

It didn’t matter. He’d crashed.

 

The blood began to seep even further from his wound, staining his suit, and dripping on the ground. Lance looked back and realized he’d been dripping blood into the snow for a few yards now. 

 

He’d crashed. 

 

Lance’s eyes began grow heavy. The cold was not helping the wound, though it definitely had begun to numb the pain. His arms gave out and went limp. 

 

He crashed?

 

Lance began to blink for longer periods of time, and his vision began to blur once more. 

 

He crashed his Lion. 

 

Lance passively touched his wound, noting the blood on his fingers and how tired he had suddenly become. It was so cold. Like a winter day back on Earth. It was cold and he wanted to curl up with some Turron and his Mami’s hot chocolate and sleep. 

 

His Lion. 

 

Yes... sleep. He could sleep right here. The blue snow was certainly soft. It was like nature’s bed. He fell over, the pain completely numbed by the cold, already, and began to close his eyes. Just as the strange, alien world began to turn black, the figure of a metallic Lion appeared in his vision. He smiled, softly, and croaked out a single word. 

 

“ _ Blue _ .”

 

And then, once again, the world turned to black.

 

 

 

\------

 

 

 

When Lance woke again, with a start, he realized he was no longer cold. 

 

For a moment, he thought that he might’ve died and woken up in the afterlife, but then he sat up, abruptly, and felt the searing pain in his side again.  _ Nope. Definitely still alive. _

 

He looked around and realized that he wasn’t on the strange, deserted planet anymore. He was laying on a warm (as if being heated), metallic floor (that still managed to be somewhat soft). Above him was a set of familiar controls and behind him was a familiar chair.

He looked up through the window and realized that he wasn’t on a planet at all, anymore. He was back in space.

 

He looked down at his wound and was surprised to find that, although the blood stain was still there, it was covered up by what looked like a big, high tech band-aid that was stopping the bleeding (for now). He wasn’t even sure how that was possible. 

 

He opened his mouth to speak, and was surprised by how hoarse and weak his voice sounded. 

 

“Red?”

 

Instantly, the controls lit up brighter and the interior of Red’s sick-ass, robotic body glowed redder. As if she was excited to see him again.

 

He thought he had felt like the galaxy’s biggest piece of shit before, but now he was really feeling like the galaxy’s biggest of shit.

 

“Red…” Lance croaked out, tears already making their ways to the brim of his eyes. “I am so so sorry.”

 

Red made a sound that was robotic yet sort of sounded like… a confused meow? Lance took that as a “what for?”

 

“I messed up the mission. I failed the galaxy. Everyone was depending on me… you and Hunk and Pidge and Keith and Shiro… and the princess. And I messed up. Big time. And I still made you come save my sorry ass when I crashed and almost died, like an idiot. I’m sorry.”

 

Red’s interior got warmer. In a comforting way. As if she was giving him a warm hug. She purred.

 

Lance really started crying, then. 

 

“I’m sorry. You should’ve just left me to die on that dumb, gaudy planet. I promised you I’d do right by you but I failed. I failed you like I failed Blue, and now the entire galaxy is at fault and- and-”

 

Lance was cut off by a vision that overtook his mind, forcing his eyes shut. In it, he saw Red, looking at him, standing before him- as if they had both astral projected out of their individual bodies. 

 

He saw Red again, this time, back on Planet Cotton-Candy, roaming lavender caverns and marching through blue snow in search of him. He felt her worry, her desperation- he felt her feelings in a way that had made her seem more human that she had ever seemed before. She cried out, sadly- in a horrible, heartbroken way. Like a mother who had lost her cub. 

 

Then he saw another vision- a vision of her finding him, taking him with her. Frantically flying back into space, headed back to the castle as fast as she possibly could. Not worried about how he’d failed or how he’d messed up. Just worried about him. Because she cared about him. 

 

His eyes fluttered open, and Lance realized he was sobbing. 

 

“Red…” He choked out. “ _ Red _ …”

 

The sensation of a warm hug came back. He smiled through his tears, and crawled over to his soft leather seat, sliding right into it. Red purred. 

 

Blueprints for a Galra superweapon popped up on his screen. 

 

Red had downloaded the information before he’d crashed. The entire time, he was so caught up with... She’d been doing nothing but looking out for him. This entire time.

 

Lance started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. The laughter just bubbled up. 

 

He was back with his Lion. He wasn’t a failure. 

 

He was a paladin. 

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of angst. I'm sorry I have to torture my sunshine child in this way.
> 
> Notes: Ok so 1. I'm actually a Cuban person myself who is currently experiencing the Holidays in a Cuban household and so I worked in a reference to a Cuban Holiday favorite into the story: Turrón! Turrón is a Spaniard nougat candy that is REALLY popular among Cuban people during Christmas (but also sometimes during the rest of the year) and is typically made with nuts, egg whites, honey, and sugar! Lance def loves it. 
> 
> 2\. I know I took a lot of liberties with Red's abilities, okay? Just let her bE THE MOM SHE WAS MEANT TO BE. 
> 
> Another thing: A BIG thank you again to laurlovescookies on tumblr for being so lovely and requesting this fic for me (and as a gift, no less)! I really hope that you, among everyone else, enjoyed this fic and that your roommate enjoys it too! Thank you so much for your request!
> 
> If you, upon reading this fic, or any of my other fics would like to request a piece for yourself, please message me here or my tumblr (luxuriant-starlight) for more details!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading! Please kudos, bookmark, or comment if you liked it! 
> 
> Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas Eve Eve!!! <3


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